


Monuments to Closeness

by wyverary



Category: Let's Play Cyberpunk Red - Polygon (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, angst question mark, folks i swear i've tried but i just do not know how to tag this story, hurt/comfort elements, late LATE stage capitalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27381385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyverary/pseuds/wyverary
Summary: "Anyway, you’re looking for someone?”“A man,” said Vang0. “Works for a corp, maybe? Kinda tall. I did some sleuthing on the Net, but I haven’t turned up much.”Silence.A moment later. “Anything else?”Vang0 shook his head.Dasha looked over at Burger, brows raised. “Is that it?”-Burger and Vang0 face the music.
Relationships: Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	Monuments to Closeness

**Author's Note:**

> hello, technically ive had this in the works since like february but unfortunately im more of an “erratic, inconsistent bursts of inspiration” type of writer
> 
> main content warnings (with spoilers) are in the end notes, please do check them out if you think you need to because this is not a super fun story

It started with a celebration of Vang0’s fifteenth stream follower. 

Joe’s is a diner at the edge of the city center, by the docks, just before the exit to the bay bridge. The interior is the sort of stuff that signalled the future a long time ago, all shiny metal and clean lines. The clientele? About as reputable as you’d expect. At the table next to them is a couple that seem to be tiredly debating who keeps the dog in the breakup. By the window are a young woman and a middle-aged man exchanging cash for a baggy in a handshake that’s not quite discreet enough. An older woman is passed out in a booth near the door, snoring soundly.

Burger mainly comes here for the soup and the shakes.

“I’m just saying, what does it even mean to have a body when you can make it into whatever you want, right? Like, everyone just wants to play god these days. It’s not sustainable.”

Burger couldn’t say that one didn’t sting, a little. “I hate to be the one to tell ya this, buddy, but...take it from me, some people have good fuckin’ reasons.”

“I don’t mean you. I mean, obviously _you_ need it, but do other people need fuckin’ metal claws instead of hands? Is that really necessary?”

“Well, no, I guess that’s not exactly the same, but you’re kinda makin’ it sound like it is.”

“I’m really not if you’d actually listen to me.”

“And what about that camera of yours, huh?” All things considered, it’s not noticeable. You’d have to be looking real hard to see that Vang0’s right eye is just a slightly brighter, more artificial blue than his left.

“That’s different. That’s just business.”

“One way to think of it, I guess.”

“Thought we were here to celebrate.”

“It just seems a little ironic, is all. With whatcha been sayin’ the past few minutes.”

“Streaming’s just what I’m meant to do, I think,” Vang0 said with a shrug. “Nothing I can do about that.”

Burger furrowed his brow, puzzled. “Nothing you can _do_ about it?”

“Uh,” Vang0 grimaced. “Well, I mean, _I_ must’ve went out and got it.”

Something was implied there. Something Burger couldn’t quite put together. “You must’ve?”

“You know I don’t...remember everything.”

“So did ya or didn’t ya?”

Vang0 rolled his eyes, but his shoulders slumped under his jacket. “I must’ve. Who cares.”

Burger watched as Vang0 turned his head to look impatiently toward the kitchen doors. It wasn’t the first time he felt like the two of them were tuned to completely different frequencies, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. 

“You’re right. It’s your big night, I shouldn’t be grillin’ ya.” 

“Yeah, whatever.”

They sat in silence for the next few minutes, waiting for their food, Vang0 drumming his chipped polish fingernails on the stainless steel and Burger trying to catch his eyes. Something in the forlorn drone of the jukebox infused the washed-out diner with a surreal layer of softness. _And so it seems that we have met before, and laughed before, and loved before. But who knows where or_

Suddenly, Vang0 stiffened in his seat, looking ahead. “Burger. Behind you.”

“Huh?”

“No, don’t, don’t look—”

Burger whipped around in his seat, scanning the rest of the diner. The woman in the booth was awake and sipping from a steaming mug, the younger woman by the window was alone now, and the couple next to them had moved from arguing to glaring at each other, but nothing stuck out to him. Nothing that would make Vang0 look quite this wigged out. 

“He was there, I saw him.”

“Who?”

Vang0’s eyebrows scrunched up. “...I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I just...felt it. Like, I just wanted to ralph as soon as I saw him.” 

“Well, what’d he look like?” asked Burger.

“Kinda big, I guess?”

“Big?”

“Just, I dunno, tall and pale and—and creepy.” Vang0 shivered slightly.

“Anything else?”

Vang0 scoffed, rolling his eyes. “If I knew literally anything else about him, I would tell you.”

“I...don’t know whatcha want me to say, buddy.”

“I’m not _crazy_ , Burger!”

“Hey, hey, I’m just tryin’ to get the picture. Settle down a little,” Burger said, reaching his hand out to Vang0’s arm on the table between them.

Vang0 jerked his arm back, scowling. He didn’t respond.

Burger sighed, body deflating like a busted tire. Sometimes it took some finagling.

“Whaddaya want me to do, Vang0? Whatever you need, I’ll do it, I just need ya to tell me.”

From across their little table, he still looked like a scared critter. Tight-jawed, shaking a little, but not enough to be perceptible unless you really looked at him. When Burger was a kid, and his family still owned their farmland, he’d always try and sneak into the coop to play with the chickens. Turns out, they don’t much like clumsy children stomping around in their house. They’d eye him a little as he peered through the wire and ruffle their feathers and quiver a little as their heads jerked from side to side, but they’d scatter the minute he tumbled in the coop. Vang0 looked a little like that now, eyes flicking around the room like he was trying to catalog every little element. It’s not a flattering comparison, but Vang0’s not one for flattery anyway.

“Just stick close tonight, okay?” Vang0 relented, finally.

Burger quirked a smile. It’s a start.

* * *

“I don’t suppose ya caught him on camera?”

“The one _fuckin’_ time I wasn’t streaming…”

“I just hope you’ve got enough for Dasha to go off of, is all.”

“And if she doesn’t know anything? What then?”

Burger sighed. “Then we’ll figure that out, I guess.”

Old Downtown barely still exists. Since the bombs and the rebuilding in the other parts of the city, the place is less of a neighborhood and more of a collection of crappy buildings no one’s had time to fix up in over twenty years. Dasha’s building is one on a street of symmetrical concrete buildings with blocky, grid-like exteriors. Burger thinks the big medical warehouse used to be around here, but those days are long past.

They parked Keanu across the street, and came in through the deserted entryway. Fluorescent lights winked in and out every so often as Dasha buzzed them in. Off the elevator, through the gray-carpeted hallway, knocking on a door no more distinct than the others around it except for the number “308” in flickering letters.

“It looks like a bunker in here.”

Dasha raised her eyebrows. “Better than being holed up in a van like you two clowns.”

“Whatever,” said Vang0, brushing past her through the door. 

She scowled, turning her head to follow him. “And don’t you dare stream in my apartment, you little rat.”

Burger grinned up at her. “Nice to see ya again, Dasha.”

“Just come on in, Burger,” she said, scowl turning to a slight smile as she led him in. “I’d offer you some food, but I think if you wanted something from a can, you’d get it yourself.”

“I appreciate it.”

He could hear the smirk from where her back was turned as she walked over to her bed. “Sure.”

Burger had been here once or twice before, on jobs, but he hadn’t ever really stopped in like this. It was small, was the thing, in its vaguely L-shaped size. Crossing the threshold from the outside hallway, Burger walked past an empty bed on his way to what was seemingly _Dasha’s side of the room_ in the nook of the L, where Vang0 had already sprawled out. Space was taken up against the wall opposite the other bed by a table holding a small microwave and a fridge, and stacks of cans and Prepack. Almost no decoration and only one window, though Dasha definitely had the bigger wardrobe.

In short, it’s the kind of place Dasha wouldn’t stay unless she had to.

“Ya got a roommate?”

Dasha shrugged. “Barely see her. She works day hours. Anyway, you’re looking for someone?”

“A man,” said Vang0, eyeing Dasha’s Agent in the corner of her nook. “Works for a corp, maybe? Kinda tall. I did some sleuthing on the Net, but I haven’t turned up much.”

Silence.

A moment later. “Anything else?”

Vang0 shook his head. 

Dasha looked over at Burger as he leaned on the table, brows raised. “Is that it?”

“I didn’t really see him, myself…”

“Oh my god.”

“He was at Joe’s the other night. That was where Vang0 saw him.”

She scoffed. “I don’t know what kind of miracle worker you think I am—”

“Pretty sure he was in a suit,” Vang0 chimed in, still lying back on Dasha’s bed.

“Great,” said Dasha. “I was going to at least _listen_ to you before I kicked you out, because you definitely can’t afford me, but at this point I can’t even _pretend_ I can help you.”

Burger caught Vang0 raising his eyebrows at him, like _I told you so_.

“Dasha, wait,” Burger said, trying to figure out a way back on track.

“No. I don’t know what exactly you’re up to, but you’re wasting my time.”

She’d stood up by that point and was near to pulling out _something_ from her jacket when Vang0 spoke again, body tensed. 

“I think this guy is the reason I can’t remember anything. Like, he or someone with him wiped my brain and dropped me off in that warehouse.”

Dasha whisked her gun out, almost nonchalant, and lined it up with Vang0’s forehead. He just stared up at her, blankly. “Keep talking.”

“Besides the… _regular_ amnesia, I’ve been losing time lately. Like, five minutes at most, usually, but I won’t remember _anything_.”

He paused.

“It’s a hunch, but I think he might have something to do with it.”

“And why should I care?”

“If he’s corporate, then there’s money in finding out what the hell this guy wants with me.”

An agonizing couple seconds passed as she thought it over. A real tableau, Dasha’s arm elegantly outstretched, Vang0’s tense recline on her bed, the glossy silver of the pistol between them, before she withdrew her gun casually. “Fine. I’ll take it. But I still can’t just track this guy down for you.”

As soon as the gun was gone, Vang0 rolled off the bed and stalked to the door, glaring.

Burger shook his head, breaking out of a stunned silence. “Well, where do ya usually get your intel?” 

“Usually? I hang around seedy places, wait for the tweakers to spill their guts. There’s only so much going on in this town for people to talk about.” She’d taken the vacated spot on the bed, smug smile on her face the only evidence of what had just happened.

“...ya think that’ll work?” 

“I think it’s a start. And I’ll keep my eyes open in the meantime, for headhunters seeking their missing pet techies.”

“I can hear you,” said Vang0, gritting his teeth.

“Shooting you is still on the table.”

He scoffed and left the room, slamming the door shut behind him. The tower of non-perishable food rattled a little.

“Jeez, Dasha, ya didn’t have to be so brutal.”

“Wouldn’t’ve actually shot him, Burger, don’t worry your little head,” she said with a grin.

Burger sighed. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Out the door, down the hall. _Please_ use it one at a time.”

He made to leave, but as he turned the door handle, Dasha spoke again.

“Hey, Burger?”

He turned back. “Yep?”

Her eyes were studying the carpet. “Next time you come around...I probably won’t be here.”

“What?”

“I’m relocating. Nothing personal. Shoot me a message next time and I’ll send you my address, but no reason to come back here.”

“Okay...ya need any help? Movin’, I mean?”

She smiled. A little. “No, Burger, I doubt it. But I appreciate it. Really.”

He smiled back, as much as he could without his jaw turning it into a grimace, and followed Vang0 out the door.

The hallway outside wasn’t noisy, but it wasn’t quite silent either. It was hard not to listen, as he went, to the vague sounds through thin walls of people going about their days, whatever that meant to them exactly. The cold, fluorescent-lit hallways of this complex branched off, so “down the hall” ended up being a right turn and a distant stretch to the very end. The bathroom door was locked when he tried it.

“Vang0? You in there?”

A voice came from right inside, against the door. “I’m here.”

“You okay?”

“She pulled a gun on me.”

Burger sighed. “I know she can come off a little cold sometimes…”

“Yeah,” Vango said, indignant. “Yeah, a little.”

Burger leaned his ear against the door, and the faint sounds of the hallway seemed to fade away. A couple seconds passed, of him trying somehow to sense Vang0 through the wood. Like maybe if he could calculate the space between their bodies, he could figure out how to breach it.

“Hey, was what you said before true?”

“Which part?”

“That you’ve been blankin’ out?”

A weary huff of air. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t’cha tell me, though?”

Burger could almost see him looking away pointedly. “I didn’t want you to bail on me if you thought this was too dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t’ve, you know that.”

“...and I didn’t want you to get all worried about me.”

“Well, we’re past _that_ , my dude.”

* * *

That evening came quick after they headed back to the van. Dasha had messaged Burger after they left with the coordinates of some spot she frequented for information, with a quick _Good luck._ thrown in. Vang0’s skittishness didn’t quite wear off, but he still perked up at the thought of maybe getting some answers.

When the rain clouds clustered overhead and the sun began to dip into the scummy waters of the bay was when Burger pulled off the curb outside Dasha’s place and headed downtown. Not a long drive, but long enough for the unease to swirl around in his head by the time he found parking.

After a quick shoutout to Vang0’s followers, the two of them entered the party.

The place was standard, some big, gray warehouse that’d been gutted of whatever it was intended for and filled back up with people and moving lights and cans of Smash littering the ground. On either end was a structure of thin, rickety metal, with stairs leading up to platforms high above the rest of the crowd, like scaffolding. What for, Burger could only guess, but it added a nice bit of set dressing to an otherwise cliché scene.

To some extent, Burger was built for this. The infrared optic was originally a bit of a novelty, installed on a whim when he’d first left the pack for the city, but the seedier the jobs he took, the more it seemed to come in handy. The muscle, though, that was pure. And when just good eyesight didn’t find what he was looking for, intimidation usually did. 

But muscle wasn’t worth much now. Whoever threw this party had too many friends, and they were all somehow in Burger’s way. 

“Y’sure you’ll know him when ya see him?” Burger tried to shout above the noise. The music blaring from the speakers was something oppressive and bass-heavy that he couldn’t identify in a million years.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll know, if it’s anything like last time. And the camera’ll catch him, too.”

Vang0 had an easier time weaving his way through the crowd, leaving Burger to try and elbow through without causing severe injury to the people around him. Soon, he was on his own in a churning sea of sweaty ravers.

Sighing, Burger paused his movements through the crowd, taking another second to survey the terrain. What had Dasha said about this brand of recon?

It wasn’t long before he spied someone on the outskirts of the room, passing pills out to partygoers. It took another minute to fight his way over. The woman in question was tall and dressed mostly in black, with green hair down to her shoulders. Her eyes fell on Burger as he walked up, and they looked no less shrewd as they settled.

“You want something, stud?”

Burger gave as much of a smile as he could manage. “Just...window-shopping.”

The woman snorted. “Yeah, okay. Get lost, asshole.”

“Wait, no, not like that! I swear! Just lookin’ for good, clean…information.”

The humor drained from her face. “You a cop?”

“No, not that, either. Just tryin’ to help a friend track a guy down,” said Burger, looking earnestly into her face.

“I don’t know if I’m your girl for that, man.”

“Just— Okay, have you seen any guys around here in suits? Or heard anyone talkin’ about, like, pullin’ off a kidnappin’? Maybe a brainwashin’ of some sort?”

The more he said, the more bewildered she looked. “Nope, can’t say I have. Maybe you should try L’Etranger. Heard they opened that place back up.”

“Thanks anyway, I guess,” Burger sighed. It was a long shot. “One other thing, though. Have you seen a guy, pretty short, leotard, jacket, ripped jeans, kinda choppy hair?”

She nodded past him. “Like that?”

Burger turned around and saw him, a statue in the middle of the dancefloor, unmoving and staring blankly. Burger’s optic zoomed in closer and closer, but it was, unmistakably, him. 

Burger turned back to thank her, but she was already helping the next person get a fix for the night. With a quick breath of hot, sweaty air he was rushing off to struggle through the crowd to get to Vang0.

When he broke through the throng, the boundary where everyone had decided to give the strange guy some space, Vang0 was still standing, slack-jawed, in the same spot.

“Vang0? Jeez, there ya are. Didja find anything?” 

It was eerie, how Vang0’s eyes settled on him, focused, not unlike a camera adjusting its aperture. Then, slowly, he smiled. The eyes just kept staring.

“Burger. Chainz.”

“That’s, uh, that’s me.”

“Those arms really are _sturdy_ , aren’t they…”

“Did you...did you take somethin’? Are you okay?”

Vang0 just laughed. Deep. Hollow. “I’m fuckin’ better than ever, big guy.” He moved in close, slow enough, but too fast for Burger to keep up, running his fingers up his arm. Staring. “How ‘bout you, Burger? Your night going okay?”

“Vang0, is somethin’ wrong?”

Vang0 wrapped his arms around Burger’s neck, reeling him in, and Burger was close enough now to gaze right into whatever was staring straight at him through those lenses. Feel the breath against his face, as the lights flashed coldly over the both of them.

“Want it to get even better?”

Like a shot, the eyes flicked up, behind him, widened a little.

“You.” As soon as Vang0 said it, Burger followed his rapt gaze to the top of one of the metal structures, where a tall man in an immaculate suit watched attentively. Didn’t blend in in any sense of the word, but maybe everyone around was too fucked up to notice.

As soon as Vang0 spotted him, it seemed, the man took to the stairs, Vang0 taking off after him. Burger was still reeling, but he raced in his direction, not caring this time about ravers in his wake giving him the evil eye.

Vang0 took off through a side door, Burger fighting through the crowd to reach it. The door had shut by then, but he yanked the handle fast and hurtled through the doorway.

He was met with an alleyway, washed out by fluorescents overhead, and a man under an awning. The man in the suit. 

Rain beat down in sheets on the glowing pavement.

“Who the fuck are you? Where’s Vang0?”

The man just stared. 

Burger growled, moved in to grab him. He could barely feel the drops running down his skin.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Burger.” With that, the man looked past, to something behind Burger’s shoulder. Burger turned around, to be faced with Vang0 holding a hand laser to his bleach-blonde head, dialed up to 10. The eyes were wide, screaming with no sound.

Burger won’t claim to be quick on the draw, but what was happening was almost, horribly, unmistakable.

“I’m not trying to mince words here. Chill out and step away, or we _will_ kill him.”

Burger moved back slowly, jaw clenched, taking care to keep Vang0’s drenched form within his sights. 

The man smiled, cruelly, toothy like a predator. “Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what all the fuss is about.”

“Did you do that to him? Make him go all crazy?”

“Just a bit of a test run. Nothing your friend will feel in the morning.”

Burger felt some kind of horror roiling in his stomach. “You can...control him.”

“More than that. Everything he sees through that camera, we see. So don’t do anything too cheeky, big guy.”

“That’s sick.”

“That’s _business_ ,” the man said, _almost_ smiling. “What are you gonna do about it? Call the cops?”

“No, but I’ll bash your goddamn head in,” Burger gritted out.

“You think we haven’t thought of that? You think we didn’t install a failsafe in that smart little head? In case he got a little too bold? Or his friends, for that matter?” The man scoffed. “You ‘nomadic’ types are all the same. You only ever see what’s right in front of you. You rolled with the Chatwin pack, right? Back in the day?”

The words felt like static in Burger’s ears. The struggle to process everything left his body numb, like a surgery you have to be awake for.

“How do you know that?” 

His eyebrows furrowed all angry, like Burger _still_ hadn’t put it together. “God, don’t you _get_ it by now? There’s nothing you can hide, or protect, or anything, and _some_ of us are too close to the cutting edge to be held back by some ‘ethics’ bullshit. Newsflash, we’re living in the most limitless age! Get fucking used to it.” 

He was close to yelling at that point, spit flying from his mouth. The way he spoke, it seemed as if he’d anticipated an argument. Not Burger’s argument, necessarily, but an argument all the same. Like some small part of him held out for a justification.

Rain still pattered hard on the pavement and on Burger’s skin. But the man’s suit was still fucking immaculate.

“Is that why you’re here? And at the diner? To bring us up to speed?”

“I was never at the diner. He sees what we want him to see.”

“... _We_?”

A sneer. “Wouldn’t that be convenient. I tell you everything you wanna know and you go round up all your little friends and take us down, and everyone gets to go home happy. Sorry, but this is the real world, and you know just about all you need to know.”

The music continued to pound from inside the warehouse, threatening to break out and overtake the outside. Burger’s veins thrummed in time, with anger and with fear. Mostly anger, he told himself.

“Are ya takin’ him somewhere?” he said, hugging his arms to his chest.

“Now, don’t worry about that, he’s all yours.” The man made some sort of signal with his hand and Vang0 dropped the gun, giving Burger just enough time to rush forward and catch him as he went limp. “But maybe you should think twice about harboring a ticking time bomb.”

Burger bristled, but couldn’t do much more than hug a sopping Vang0 to his chest. He was out cold.

The man stooped to pick up the gun Vang0 had dropped. Burger watched, hefted Vang0 up in his arms a little, as he turned the chrome body over in his hands, considering it like you’d consider a toy. Then, without warning, he raised it to his temple and pulled the trigger. A beam of light piercing its way through the man’s skull, and then a body lying on the concrete, blood streaming into the gutter. 

Burger reeled, clutching Vang0 closer. Almost immediately, a light flickered from above the two of them, illuminating the adjacent wall. It was a grainy video feed, of the same man with a sick grin on his face. 

“We’ll be seeing you.”

Burger looked him dead in his translucent eyes, keeping Vang0’s arm slung over his shoulder. “Fuck yourself.”

The man smiled wider and flickered out.

* * *

“Were you...in there?”

To say they were both shaken up would be an understatement. Sitting there, dripping wet, at a table in the back of a noodle restaurant about as big as a closet, neither really knew how to approach the subject.

“Sort of. A little like watching a screen. Saw it all, couldn’t do anything about it.”

“But you’re okay now, right?”

“Define ‘okay’.” No matter how hard Burger stared at him, Vang0 didn’t do anything but gaze out at the dark street through the window, noodles untouched.

“You’re in control again?”

Vang0 chuckled darkly. “Sure, but for how long? Some stranger could take over my brain at any time and there’s fuck all I can do about it. Is that _okay_?”

Burger didn’t have much of an answer. 

“I’d heard about things like this, on the Net, about runners getting their brains hacked, or soldiers getting chipped to kill on command, but I thought things like that were just stories.”

Burger shook his head. “Fuck. Didja at least get the guy in your feed?”

“No. I checked the footage,” Vang0 said, clenching his jaw and _finally_ looking Burger in the face. “Feed glitched out right about when I did.”

“God, those bastards.” Burger _felt_ his fist curl up more than he made a conscious decision to do it.

Vang0’s eyes flicked down to Burger’s hands and back up to his face, frowning. “I don’t think they were actually gonna kill me, ya know.”

“You were holdin’ a gun to your own head, Vang0. Seemed like they didn’t much care about keepin’ ya safe, the way I see it.”

Vang0 rolled his eyes, like it was all so mundane. “Okay, but if they had killed me, they wouldn’t’ve been able to use me. I’m clearly some sort of pawn for them. Killing me would’ve taken me completely off the board.”

“I wasn’t gonna risk your life just to have a go at them,” said Burger, sighing. “Much as I may have wanted to.”

“...you shouldn’t say things like that. Not when they’re listening.”

The silence stretched on, and Vang0’s food stayed untouched.

Later, when Burger’s parked the van in a lot, sent Keanu to bed for the night, when the rain has stopped and they’re both curled up on the floor in their sleeping bags trying to get some rest, Vang0 speaks up again.

The little light that comes in through the windows is blue, or feels blue, maybe. As if the van were sunken in the ocean, surrounded by the deep blue that comes before the dark of the abyss. 

“You know neither of us stand a chance, right?”

Burger didn’t answer.

“All that shit in the alleyway, it was just pageantry. But they do mean business. You can’t fight them, and I sure as hell can’t protect you from them, so why the fuck are you letting me hang around?”

Outside, a billboard flashed on the roof of a building, an ad for downloadable Xanax in shimmering, blocky letters: _FEELING TRAPPED IN YOUR OWN LIFE?_

“Burger.”

“I’m not just gonna ditch ya, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Burger closed his eyes, feeling a slight ache in the seam where his face meets his jaw. “Maybe.”

“Or you’re too fucking sentimental.”

“Or maybe I just get where you’re comin’ from.”

“Trust me, you don’t.”

Burger sighed, maybe for the millionth miserable time that day.

“...do you?”

“The lack of control? Wonderin’ what’ll happen to your body in the next twenty-four hours if you’re not careful?” Burger said. “Not a stranger to that feelin’.”

The indignation had dropped off of Vang0’s face, replaced by furrowed-brow curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t mean to make this all about me…”

“No, tell me. If you want.”

“Just...I didn’t really get an option to avoid mods, either. Even the stuff I chose to get done, what happens when the tech goes stale? What happens when my body...breaks on me?”

A pause. Heavy, weighing them down on the rough carpet of the van.

“So, ya know,” Burger added. “I get it. A little.”

“I mean, I’m no medtech, but...if that ever happened I’d try and fix it, if you wanted.” It was the most idealistic statement he’d ever heard come out of Vang0’s mouth.

Burger chuckled a bit, despite himself. “Not doubtin’ your abilities, but I don’t think I’m a router you can just fix up.”

“No, I know that. I just...I don’t like it when you’re sad.” The last part came out like a whisper.

“I’m really fine most of the time. It’s just sorta floatin’ around in the back of my mind, how much time I have left.”

“Yeah. I guess I know the feeling.”

It was dread, that Burger felt all coiled up in his stomach. Vang0 watched him with those strange blue eyes of his. Tired, but with a familiar alertness, focused piercingly on him.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I can’t be the thing that gets these fuckers outta your head. You _know_ I would if I could. I might still try.”

Vang0’s eyes drifted away, out the dashboard window, considering. When he looked back into Burger’s face, a little of the gravity had left his face. “That’s not what I need from you, Burger.”

“Well, what _do_ you need?”

“I don’t want you to go and risk your life trying to shake down some corporates on the off chance they’ll give a shit,” said Vang0, taking Burger’s hand and swallowing nervously. “I just...want you to stick around.” 

Vang0 was gripping his hand tight, fingers of one hand tracing pathways around the line of his solid knuckles. 

Burger’s hands felt more like _his_ than they had in a while.

He hesitated, a little, reaching up with his other hand to cradle Vang0’s face closer. The hand trailing around his knuckles reached up to hold it there, comfortably. 

“I said I’m not just gonna leave ya and I meant it.”

Vang0’s breath came out in a rush, eyes shut tight.

It was silent after that, the two bodies huddled together in the chill of the van. Occasionally another car would pass on the street outside and the headlights would flash against the interior, at which point Vang0 would curl in closer to Burger. To block it out, maybe. But neither of them were asleep.

“We oughta tell Dasha there’s no money in this, right?” 

Burger’s question broke the fragile quiet.

“She prob’ly knows,” Vang0 whispered into his neck. 

Burger smiled, secretly. “Yeah, but we gotta still tell her.”

A sigh. “I guess.”

“Are you feelin’… _any_ better?”

“A little.”

Relief was a weak, sputtering engine in Burger’s ribcage, but it was there. 

“Good.”

For whatever it was worth, Burger pulled him the slightest bit closer.

**Author's Note:**

> main warnings: casual ableism, guns/violence, somewhat graphic description of a guy shooting himself (with the understanding that he isn’t really dead), drug use mentioned, memory loss, possession (of sorts) leading to behavioral changes, surveillance, trauma (around memory loss/surveillance/kidnapping) that goes pretty much unresolved, general dystopian bleakness
> 
> if you liked this, i have a companion piece in the works centering mainly on dasha that i may or may not finish & publish. if you didnt like this, rip sorry.


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